Marvin Anding

Template:Infobox Officeholder Marvin E. Anding (March 10, 1922 – September 11, 1983), was a former colonel in the United States Air Force who served from 1977 until his death in office as the mayor of Bossier City in northwestern Louisiana.   Anding was the son of Ellis (born 1893) and Lillian Anding (born 1902). He was born in Adams County in western Mississippi but moved as a child to Washington in Ouachita County, Arkansas. He served in the United States Army Air Forces and then the Air Force and fought in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.   Anding was the retired commander at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City at the time of his election as mayor in 1977. In January 1978, a devastating tornado struck Bossier City. Mayor Anding and Sheriff Vol Dooley went on a Louisiana National Guard helicopter flight to survey the damage. Then KEEL radio announcer John Lee of Shreveport recalled the "shock and disbelief that Anding and Dooley both exhibited that morning and the absolute heart-felt sympathy that they expressed to those who were most seriously impacted by the storm."   Eleven months later, another destructive tornado struck Bossier City after first hitting El Dorado, Arkansas. This twister did at least $100 million in damage. Mayor Anding said that only divine intervention could have kept the death toll so low: "He (God) must have been with us. I can't believe we only had two deaths with the miserable, miserable mess we have out there." The Bossier City tornado leveled a nearly vacant motor hotel on the city's east side near Louisiana Downs. It injured sixty persons. Anding was compelled to order the arrest of looters and ordered a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. The storm leveled homes, schools, trees, and businesses in an eight-mile path two-blocks wide.   Anding was married to the former Patricia Janelle Ball (1935-2012), a paralegal secretary for the United States attorney for the Shreveport-based United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana and a resident of Bossier City since 1971.Anding and his wife are interred at Hillcrest Memorial Park in Haughton in southeastern Bossier Parish.